UP Cabinet Approves IT City on Chak Gajaria Farm Land (April 2013)

Background

Chak Gajaria farm was a government-run agricultural and dairy farm on Sultanpur Road on the southern edge of Lucknow, used for animal husbandry activity under a Dairy Farming Scheme (DFS). By the early 2010s the state government wanted to free this land for urban and institutional use, folding it into the broader push to build a technology and township corridor along Sultanpur Road.

What the Cabinet decided

The Uttar Pradesh government decided to develop IT city, an IT institute, modern medicity, administrative training institute and dairy processing plant on 846.49 acre land of Chak Gajaria farm near Lucknow. An official spokesman said a proposal to relocate existing activities at Gajaria farm to some other place and allow a project of housing and commercial use was passed during the cabinet meeting chaired by Chief Minister Akhilesh Yadav.

How the land was carved up

Under the decision, 100 acre land would be transferred to the IT and Electronics department for IT city, 50 acre land to the technical education department for an India IT Institute, and 100 acre to the medical education department for a medicity. In addition, 20 acre land would go to the medical department for a super speciality hospital/cardiology centre, 20 acre for a modern dairy processing plant, and 25 acre land to the personnel department for an administrative institute, free of cost.

Under the project, LDA would also construct EWS and LIF dwellings as per Housing and Urban Planning department norms, while the remaining developed land would be auctioned by LDA, with the fund generated kept in a separate bank account called the project development fund.

Relocating the existing dairy farm activity

The DFS scheme run by the animal husbandry department at Gajaria farm was to be shifted to the Agriculture Management Institute at Rehmankhera, with the agriculture department providing 25 acres to animal husbandry free of cost and required facilities created within a maximum of two years. Other animal husbandry activities and the proposed modern dairy farm project were to be shifted to land in Barabanki district in a phased manner.

Practical effect and what followed

The April 2013 order was the enabling land-use decision that unlocked Chak Gajaria farm for non-agricultural development and set the pattern of splitting the site into fixed-acreage plots for specific state departments rather than acquiring fresh land. In practice it launched what came to be called Chak Gajaria (CG) City — a mixed township on Sultanpur Road that eventually grew to include an international cricket stadium, a mall, and later medical and IT anchors.

The 100-acre IT City plot carved out in 2013 was subsequently developed on a PPP basis: the Government of Uttar Pradesh, represented by U.P. Electronics Corporation Ltd. (UPLC), signed a Concession Agreement with an IT company for development of an "IT City SEZ at Lucknow" at Chak Gajaria Farms, Sultanpur Road, through a Design-Build-Finance-Operate-Transfer PPP structure. That plot became the HCLTech campus, which industry sources describe as a 100-acre facility operational since 2016 within the IT City SEZ, accommodating over 6,500 employees.

The 50-acre medicity-linked allocation was later tied to Atal Bihari Vajpayee Medical University: a 2019 cabinet meeting chaired by CM Yogi Adityanath approved transfer of land to Atal Bihari Vajpayee Medical University to be constructed in a 50-acre area near Chak Gajaria farm.

Note for readers: the 2013 decision covered 846.49 acres. It should not be confused with the much larger, later Sultanpur Road "IT City" land-pooling scheme pursued by LDA from 2021 onward, which covers a separate, far bigger footprint (reported at roughly 2,660–3,490 acres across 11 villages) and follows a different land-pooling mechanism rather than direct department-wise transfer. That later scheme is a distinct notification and is tracked separately.